Uzbekistan plans to gradually implement hundreds of human rights recommendations from a United Nations council, it said on Wednesday, but it made a point of refusing to decriminalize homosexuality calling it irrelevant to its society. Human rights groups and bodies routinely criticized the government of the mostly Muslim Central Asian nation over human rights issues under President Islam Karimov who ran the country from 1989 until his death in 2016. The former Soviet republic of 32 million started re-engaging human rights bodies under the new president, Shavkat Mirziyoyev, as it sought to establish closer ties with the West and attract badly needed foreign investment.